Get more with Google's Gmail (Feature)

Washington - By almost any measure, Google's Gmail (http://mail.google.com) is a hit. Although the free e-mail service has been widely available for only a couple of years, it's already the third most popular Web-based e-mail offering online - behind only Yahoo Mail and Windows Live Hotmail, which have been around for over a decade. Many were initially attracted to Gmail because the service offered more storage space than competitors - and at six gigabytes and growing, that's still a major draw. Yet Gmail boasts a lot more than oodles of space to store your messages. The fact is, Gmail is the first Web-based e-mail service that's full-featured enough to compete with your standard application-based e-mail programs. Here's why. ---Better searching Use any e-mail program long enough, and the primary struggle becomes finding an e-mail message that you're looking for - and fast. You might hope that given Google's prowess as a search engine company, Gmail would excel in this area, and it does. Sitting atop your inbox in Gmail is a search box, and it's as simple as the one that greets the millions of people that use Google every day. You can simply type a search term - whether it's the name of a person who sent a message, some text within a message, your own name, or an e-mail address - and Gmail will retrieve relevant e-mail messages with uncanny precision. Compare this to other e-mail programs and services - in which you'll need to fill out one or more boxes pertaining to who sent the message, the subject, or the recipient - and you'll quickly see how Gmail both saves you time and pleases you more often with search results that matter. You can get specific if you want to by clicking a 'Show search options' link and being more specific about the parts of e-mail messages you want to search, but you don't have to - and that's what makes Gmail's search unique. ---Account consolidation One of the big problems with free, Web-based e-mail services in the past has been that you couldn't use them to receive messages from other accounts that you may have, nor could you use a traditional e- mail program to receive messages from your free account. Gmail has taken those concerns away, making this a free service that you can migrate to slowly, if you wish. There's a Settings link at the top of your screen in a Gmail account. Click that, and you'll just about as many configuration options as you will in a robust traditional e-mail application. And you'll also find an Accounts tab, where you can configure Gmail to retrieve messages from your other accounts. You'll also see a Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab, where you can get POP settings that allow you to access your Gmail from another program, such as Microsoft Outlook, or have Gmail automatically forward messages you receive in your Gmail account to another account. ---Robust filtering Keeping your inbox uncluttered is a great way to ensure that you're not overloaded with messages all at once. Most good traditional e-mail programs help you handle the incoming deluge by allowing you to set up filters and folders to automatically route incoming messages to descriptive folders that you can attend to later. Your Gmail account has a 'Create a filter' link. Click it, and you can set up specific rules for what to do with a message when it arrives. You can filter messages by criteria that includes subject, recipient, addressee, or words that might be included in the message. Spam filtering is another area where Gmail excels. Gmail's spam filtering technology is a closely-guarded secret, but most agree that the spam filters in Gmail, turned on by default, work as well if not better than those that come with the fee-based Cloudmark Desktop, available for traditional e-mail programs. ---Keyboard shortcuts Web-based e-mail services have always been too mouse-intensive. In part this was because they were designed for the browser interface, which has always made keyboard shortcuts more difficult to implement than they are in standard programs. Nevertheless, overuse of the mouse just slows you down - and can lead to repetitive stress injuries to boot. Gmail changes all that by cleverly making the keyboard useful again in the context of a Web browser. From anywhere within Gmail, pressing the letter 'c' will take you directly to the Compose Mail screen, allowing you to start a new message. Pressing the letter 'r' allows you to reply to a message that you're reading while tapping 'f' will allow you to forward a message. Hitting 'a' enables you to replay to 'all' of those on a recipient list. 'N' takes you to the next message in your inbox, while 'p' takes you to the previous one. The list of keyboard shortcuts is extensive. permitting an almost mouse-free experience if that's more to your liking. For the complete list, just click the Help link in Gmail and type 'keyboard' in the search field. ---The final word No one likes moving to a new e-mail program. There's a new interface to learn and a new e-mail address to pass around to your friends and colleagues. Gmail, though, even has the latter concern covered, since you can use the service merely as a portal to your existing accounts, even sending messages from Gmail that go through the servers of your main e-mail account. It's tough not to like what Google has done with Gmail - and at no cost, the price is certainly right.